Why Low Carb Diets Are Bad For Losing Weight

You hear about them all the time. Low carb diets this, low carb diets that. Every celebrity is on this diet and everyone you know at work, at school or anywhere is on this diet. Well, if that's all they're using, they've been on it for a while and they're completely healthy, then they must not be following it completely or they're lying!

Why? Because low carb diets, for a short period of time do work to help you lose weight, but only for a short period of time, like 2-3 weeks. But if you stick with low carb diets for a longer period of time, you'll definitely be losing something other than weight and you'll see negative side effects with your health.

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of foods out there that you should avoid, and most of them are very high in carbs. And these foods are great to avoid for just general health, not only just to lose weight.

But the other side of that coin is that carbohydrates are also a very necessary nutrient for your body to function properly. So a long term weight loss diet completely devoid of carbohydrates is not a good idea. A short one is fine since it's pretty much like fasting for a few weeks, which won't do much damage.

Here's another fact that will show you how bad long term low carb diets are, outside of weight loss. There is a risk of osteoporosis for women from long term low carb diet use. Most low carb diets will tell you to increase the amounts of protein you eat.

Normally, that's a great thing because one of the building blocks of your body is protein. But, like anything else, too much protein spells disaster. Excess protein from meat can leech calcium from your bones, which can increase the risk of osteoporosis. Why does your body do this? Because protein can cause acid build up in your blood and your body removes the calcium to balance out your blood.

Okay, so you say that's a woman's problem. Here's one for both. Your brain uses about 20% of glucose from your body. Now, glucose is a simple sugar. Simple sugars are carbohydrates.

Get the connection? If you decrease the intake of carbohydrates from your diet, you are starving your brain of an important nutrient for healthy brain function. That's definitely not something anyone wants, whether you're trying to lose weight or not.

But specifically with weight loss, low carb diets stop working if you use them over a long period of time because at that point you won't be losing weight or fat. At that point, you've already lost most, if not all, of the fat stores in your body. The reason low carb diets work so great in the beginning is because your body is using up the fat stores in your body since you aren't eating carbs, which provide energy to your body.

So naturally, your body uses up your fat stores. But once those are gone, your body turns to muscles and body tissue. So clearly, you are not losing fat at that point, which is what you would want. You'll be losing the parts of you that are helpful to real weight loss. Carbs are sources of energy for your body so after the initial 2-3 weeks of the low carb diet, re-introduce healthy carbs to your body and you will be in good shape and on the path to healthy weight loss.